


Entangled

by hotrodngold (Krystalicekitsu)



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Episode Related, Episode: s01e11 The Eye, Gen, Revelations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-19
Updated: 2011-06-19
Packaged: 2017-10-20 19:41:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/216438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Krystalicekitsu/pseuds/hotrodngold
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was there, standing on that pier, soaked to the bone, that Rodney McKay realized something very, very important.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Entangled

**Author's Note:**

> Because I seem to be getting hit with random ideas from random fandoms lately.

It was there, standing on that pier, soaked to the bone, that Rodney McKay realized something very, very important. Not astrophysically or quantum mechanically important, but very very important nonetheless.

"Trust me, I'm not that brave; I'd tell you if I could."

But the words that slipped out were a lie.

Staring into Kolya's rage-incensed eyes and half a shove away from a drop that would end him in the ocean below or skewered by one of the city's spires, Rodney realizes he wouldn't have told Kolya if he had known.

Not in a million years.

There were people who depended on him. Not to know everything, though there was that, too. No, instead, they depended on him to do the right thing. To not break under pressure and to keep his cool- he laughs- in a storm.

They depend on him.

And god if that weight didn't break his shoulders.

Half a second after this fate-altering revelation, he has another.

 _Oh, god. I don't want that. I can't handle that responsibility._

But as Kolya released him to lick his own wounds of leadership, of responsibility, and Elizabeth's arms came up and out to steady him and reassure herself of his life and health, he had another.

Because he didn't have to handle it by himself. At least not completely, and Elizabeth and Sheppard were right there in the same boat he was; responsible for a group of people prepared as much as was possible but in no way trained for this in a galaxy just enough like their own to be lethal and paradoxically wonderful at once.

He had people to lean on as other's leaned on him and for one, brief, spontaneous, dark-matter half-life instance, he had a moment of perfect clarity and he could see it all. See all the connections, the myriad of links between himself and those who depended on him, whose actions affected his, and those of Weir and the IOA and the SGC above him who reacted and impacted from those very same decisions like a spider's-web of entangled particles glowing and shifting in patterns of order and stability.

Every time they suffered a loss, the web would dim but shift and cycle until a new pattern, stronger and closer than the last emerged as a cohesive whole.

For one, shining second Rodney McKay feels as if he belongs somewhere for the first time in his life.

And then Sheppard goes and does something stupid again.


End file.
